AMD: FreeSync Over HDMI Coming Next Year

December 8, 2015December 23, 2015by Dan Hamilton

AMD has announced that FreeSync over HDMI will be supported in 2016. The company had showcased the concept back in June earlier this year and the announcement comes two weeks after AMD added Low Framerate Compensation to FreeSync. Previously users had to use a DisplayPort in order to take advantage of FreeSync technology. Many graphics cards currently out on the market have a DisplayPort output, but HDMI outputs are even more popular.

HDMI technology does not inherently support either FreeSync or G-Sync. There are current FreeSync and G-Sync monitors with HDMI inputs, but they don’t allow users to take advantage of FreeSync or G-Sync over HDMI. Rather than waiting for the next HDMI revision, AMD has instead decided to make the feature possible by adding a vendor-specific extension. This means that current FreeSync monitors will not be able to deliver FreeSync over HDMI, but rather there’ll be new ones that will be released next year that can. So you may want to delay purchasing a monitor until then if this feature is important to you.

Users will be required to have a compatible graphics card and a monitor for the setup to work properly. If you’ve got a Radeon graphics card that can output over HDMI 1.2 or above then you’re in luck. You’ll have the ability to use the feature after the necessary upcoming driver has been installed otherwise you will need to upgrade both your graphics card and monitor to make use of the HDMI feature.

The company has announced that around eight monitors will be coming out in the near future that will have the FreeSync over HDMI capability built into them. The majority of theses monitors come from Samsung, but their list also includes ones from LG and Acer. No details were given on their refresh rates or panel types.